Making a handy phone sheet for a small business

February 25, 2008 10:03 AM

I'd like to find an application that would help two assistants keep track of incoming phone calls (and their status) for a small office of 10 employees, without having to commit to an expensive database solution like Filemaker.

Ideally, the assistants would be able to record who called, when, and for what reason, and that information would be shared with the rest of the office. Then each call could checked as "incoming" or "resolved".

Anyone have any tips or obvious solutions for making a simple but handy phone sheet that I am missing?

posted by phaedon to computers & internet (7 comments total)

Wouldn't Excel take care of this? When I briefly worked in ad sales for a small newspaper and magazine publisher, we used that to keep track of the status of ads being placed that everyone could view.
posted by deinemutti at 10:10 AM on February 25

A web-based form builder like Wufoo or a Google Spreadsheet with a form front-end could do the job.
posted by junesix at 10:16 AM on February 25

I think that's what Highrise was built for.
posted by mkb at 10:26 AM on February 25

Seconding HighRise. If you want to spend zero dollars you could probably make it work in TaDa List of the free version of Backpack by sharing a login.
posted by COD at 11:06 AM on February 25

As far as my understanding goes, the problem with Excel is that it doesn't allow multiple users to edit and read the same document at the same time. As for the web application suggestions, I definitely like them but am averse to having to pay a monthly charge.. there's got to be something out there that is similar to highrise that can be installed locally and more heavily customized to suit our specific needs :P
posted by phaedon at 11:18 AM on February 25

You might be interested in Bento, which is an entry-level database. Think of it like this: Bento is to FileMaker Pro as iMovie is to Final Cut Pro. It's very reasonably priced, and can synch to iCal and Address Book, if you're running OS X. You can learn more at http://www.filemaker.com/products/bento/overview.html
posted by Lucy2Times at 11:41 AM on February 25

Do you have an office network on which you can internally install a helpdesk? There are loads out there. You can assign calls to a specific person and mark them as incoming, returned, pending, resolved.

Alternatively, a shared Google Docs spreadsheet would work, although it won't email the specific call recipients like a decent helpdesk will.

Both solutions are, of course, free.
posted by DarlingBri at 1:08 PM on February 25